Lots of bloggers and marketers have participated in social voting sites like Digg and then give up because they didn’t see many of their posts get to the front page. What is really possible if they participated in a more effective way with these sites?

Emory, it’s great to have another interview! The last one was on cost per action marketing and it was popular, but today you have something else on your mind, specifically digg. When did you get started with digg and what kind of success did you have with it?

I started using digg on 4/22/06 and had zero success. I loved the idea of reading news stories that had been voted into popularity rather than picked by editors. But, I admit in the forefront of my mind was the possibility of nudging some of my underappreciated content toward the top of the digg front page. So, like any noob would, I submitted my own posts to digg, sat back, and watched them fall flat, rarely if ever getting out of the single digit range.

So, how did Digg rise to wild popularity, fall to mediocrity and give birth to numerous social voting sites?

Digg really was “The Great White Hope”, so to speak, but they blew it with Version 4. They made a classic mistake that so many companies make. When they tried to reinvent themselves, they did not play to their strengths. Coca Cola made that same mistake with New Coke.